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Explain Transphasic Builds To Me Please
kolbrandr
Member Posts: 266
I have seen people promoting a transphasic-based build for torpedo ships based on the B'rel and T'varo, and was wondering if someone could explain these to me.
The reason I ask, is because these builds seem to be utter fail to me. It seems like in most cases you would be better served battering down shields with high yield quantums to get at the hull, or using plasma. However, some people swear by these transphasic builds, so I can only assume that there is something that I am missing about them.
So somebody please explain and sell the transphasic torpedo boat build to me.
The reason I ask, is because these builds seem to be utter fail to me. It seems like in most cases you would be better served battering down shields with high yield quantums to get at the hull, or using plasma. However, some people swear by these transphasic builds, so I can only assume that there is something that I am missing about them.
So somebody please explain and sell the transphasic torpedo boat build to me.
Post edited by kolbrandr on
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Plasma burns can be cleared using Hazard Emitters and the debuff-clearing doff. Which leaves you with the somewhat lacking base damage.
Quantum torpedoes don't do enough damage to shields to bring them down, given that they only do 10% damage - which means each torp does 1K-2K per torp at most, easily regenerated. A single DHC cycle would do the same amount, and most players can tank those, so yeah.
Transphasics, on the other hand, deliver a fairly steady and reliable string of damage to hull, which tends to regenerate somewhat slower than shields. Many builds also run somewhat light on hull heals, which makes it easier. Also good against ships with low hull and high shields. Transphasics also synergise very well with the cluster torp, which can deal knockout blows of something like 30-40K through shields. Granted, it's a targetable, but that can be compensated for.
I used the cluster along with a bio back then and found that scramble sensors was really good for sneaking in my targetables. Jam to get them to blow their Sci team, then follow up with the scramble and my torps.
Is this still a viable strategy?
I assume all of the transphasics still share cooldowns? What do people slot alongside the trans and the cluster?
All torpedoes share a minimum 1 second global CD with each other. Cluster torps have a 15 second global, including with other cluster torps.
You can make a transphasic build work in PvE. It's talked about a lot with stuff like the B'rel and T'varo, but don't dismiss em for something like say science ships with limited weapon slots. It means you don't have to worry about weapons power and can focus on aux power.
The build-type got a bit of a boost thanks to fleet tac consoles as well, so you can add in a little more oomph with extra CrtH or CrtD.
My sci-heavy B'rel (with a sci captain btw) can usually hit about 6k DPS or so on most days, maybe up to 7.5k if I am more awake and trying.
Yes the cluster torp (some folks give it another nickname) can be shot down, but if you should make a transphasic build, you can work around that. Cluster is also nice because it's somewhat of an AoE. Seriously, fire one with a bunch of small-ish ships clumped in a gravity well and watch the numbers, especially if it crits.
It scales wonderfully with damage boosts and the mines it deploys have excellent shield penetration. Everything else on Transphasic builds is mostly to fill in the time between cluster launches. Additionally, you can launch them at very close range to heavily reduce the chance of it getting shot down.
Even without a build centered around, the cluster launcher is still a very powerful weapon and I use it on both my Neghvar and DSD for the raw spike damage of it. I would argue it's a better weapon than the Romulan Hyper Torpedo in most situations.
If they do manage to hit something, they're still bugged in that they can chain crit. If not for the chain crit, the clusters wouldn't do nearly the damage they do.
Over in PvEland, well - shields are either vaporized so fast by energy damage from the rest of the team or pretty much any torp obliterates shields that...
...yeah, Trans are so 2012 imho.
edit: Should note, any targetable torp or mine is pretty much subject to all the spam going on out there. Isn't it kind of funny, that the spam cleanser has become the spam? It's like those things where folks introduce another species to deal with a pest and that new species ends up becoming the pest. Trippy, eh?
The "real" selling point is the Transphasic Mine Torpedo. If one mine crits it seems to be the case that all mines crit - and there are a lot of mines involved. Breen space set, some VR Torp CD doffs, a few +Torp Consoles and 2-3 other torpedo types and you're flying around in something that packs quite a whallop.
Makes me sad for the days of har'pheng - back before someone decided to tell the server how fun a ship covered in them is.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
They don't work. People are just deluded in using them just because the tooltip reads a high % of shield penetrating damage.
The base damage of the TPhasics is the lowest in the game. So no matter how much you boost them by, their damage output is still going to be no better than a higher base damage torpedo.
Each torpedo type also has a different % by which high yield/spread boosts them by. Transphasics have the lowest multiplier, photons the 2nd highest and quantums the highest. Of all, Plasma high yield has the absolute biggest (if memory serves me right, quantum high yield is a 150% dmg bonus while a heavy plasma is 300% boost)
The damage to hull is lowered even further by kinetic resists.
Shield penetrating damage... isnt. To use simple numbers, if a photon does 200 damage, quantum does 250 and tphasic does 100 total damage... then you have this little problem of a 40% damage bleeding through the shields...
So it does 40 damage to the hull BEFORE kinetic resists. Nifty isn't it? Nope!
Quantum does 250 damage. 10% bleedthrough (standard shield bleedthrough) is 50 damage.
Of them all, photons and plasma literally put in more bleedthrough damage than Transphasics...photon by its high rate of fire adding up to higher bleedthrough damage than transphasics can manage...and Plasma via plasma burn (high yield and regular plasma torp burns are different and each stacks... omega plasma burn is a separate burn dot and it also stacks).
Using transphasics torpedoes is the most absurd thing you can do in this game. The mines do have a higher performance with their 80% penetration, this is why the breen cluster torpedo, which fires MINES, fares better.
If you want an enhanced cloak build that does great bleedthrough damage and AOE at once, just use Plasma torpedoes (high yield) and use tricobalts with dispersal 3 in the aft. The bleedthrough of 4x tricobalt mines plus aoe damage plus stun outperforms transphasic mines.
You shoot the cluster torp at point blank via enhanced battlecloak. This has always been the case, even before the state of pvp became the current spam feast. The torp should turn into mines before next cycle of faw targets it. Same goes for grav well. A surprisingly large number of people don't realize this, but grav well isn't true aoe. It has a target limit, and works on cycles. Overwhelming majority of the mines should be able to reach target instead of getting show down.
The real game changer is, all mines either crit or not crit at the same time. If your T'varo gets the max Romulan crit at ~30%, that means there's a 1/3 chance of your cluster critting. No player ship will survive that many transphasics mines critting with 80% shield penetration.
What a waste of an enhanced battlecloak boat.:P
Its the most hated B'rel in Kerrat, always called a "troll" or "terrorist" its set up with the main purpose of making Kerrat hell for Fed roms so the KDF can carry on with its business and it does a lot. Many Fed roms go in anonymous now because of it, or just don't come back to kerrat as much or ever.
Using SS3, VM1, GW1, (all doffed with purples), subspace console, iso, ams, aa, 2 cpb with jem deflector and epta for catching cloakers, and web mines, tractor mines and chrono torps with spread and the new trait for more trolling;)
B'rel is really fun, just don't try to kill stuff with EBC anymore lol. I also like using it as a vaper on my tac sometimes instead of the hohsus as thee EBC lets me use a few abilities before the decloak.
Ummm....your quantum calculation is pretty off. 10% of 250 damage is 25, not 50. Which still leaves transphasics better off.
Also, the wiki provides common damage figures for Mk XI launchers:
Quantum: 3159 DPV - 10% bleedthrough - 315.9 DPV
Transphasic: 2055 DPV - 40% bleedthrough - 822 DPV
which means that transphasics deal plenty more bleedthrough than quantums.
Furthermore,
Photon: 458 DPS - 10% bleedthrough - 45.8 DPS per launcher
Transphasic: 205 DPS - 40% bleedthrough - 82 DPS per launcher
So you get higher bleedthrough DPS than photons.
Plasma does 2230 DPV/ 260 DPS which means 223 bleed/ 26 BPS without the plasma fire.
Plasma fire adds 613.2 total plasma damage over 10 seconds - add that to DPV and you have 873.2 DPV, only marginally higher than Transphasics - and the plasma hull DPS is 87.32 DPS, marginally higher than transphasics.
Add this little tidbit from the wiki, and Transphasics are pretty much even with plasma:
This carries another factor - if your opponent is using resilient shields, you only get 5% bleedthrough - which halves the damages of quantum and photon, but causes a miniscule drop in transphasic penetration.
Photons are a no-no for EBC builds, since that high rate of fire means you'll be uncloaking way too often. Plasma, well......high yield has splash and is targetable, which means you can't point-blank it to get through spam. Plus with so many using that debuff-clearing doff, the plasma fire doesn't last long. Omega torp is not particularly useful for the same reason as photons.
In short, mathematically, your statements are all pretty inaccurate.
2 Sci B'rel
Sci T'varo
2 Tac T'varo
Though I'm kind of letdown by the Raider buffs...meh.
Yep, my fubar on that one.
The damage modifiers of the torpedo attacks (particularly quantums) & the refire rate of photons combined (in the case of photons) is why transphasics fail.
This is from the sto wiki concerning high yield 1:
Transphasics get their base damage cut down to 86% which means its bleedthrough of 40% is cut down by 14% as well. You're down to 26% per torpedo.
Photons get their base damage increased and so does their bleedthrough. From 10% up to 18%.
Quantums get their base damage boosted and again so does their bleedthrough.. 10% to 21%.
the real bleedthrough difference between 26% and 21% and 18% is not that big when you're hitting the biggest hitpoint part of a target: the hull. The BIG difference is the boosted base damage of photons/quantums tearing the shield that's on top of it and then scoring a single hit to the hull with a normal torpedo which instantly makes all the phasic's bleedtrough damage seem like a little scratch.
There is a reason why transphasics are not widely used. They don't measure up.
IF the game had = damage modifiers for the torpedos in high yield/spread then yes, phasics would be awesome in comparison. weak to hit shield but nice hull bleedthrough all of this based on their base torpedo damage.
IF the transphasic bleedthrough was 80% like the mines then their lower damage modifier would not be a problem.
IF there was no high yield or spread attacks the phasics would indeed be better because of their bleedthrough for certain builds..quantums and photons on autofire still bring the shield down faster than a phasic and beat the phasic's bleedthrough damage the moment a single torpedo hits the hull. A phasic torpedo hitting the naked hull doesn't do much in comparison.
Re: Resilient shields - Yes, but they also have less shield HP. You don't use those shields because of that unless you're stuck using them because they're a reputation gear kit shield. case in point, you get no real benefit from using an elite fleet resilient or regenerative shield.. the buffer the covariants provide is much better protection.
Re: Plasma - Plasma torpedo burn dots stack and there are two different dots: one for high yield, one for regular torpedoes. On top of that Omega torpedo has its own separate two dots (HY and regular). When you calculate the burn damage a plasma torpedo boat puts out... this meaning hyper-plasma (which uses the normal and HY dots) and Omega (its own dots) you have to calculate three high yield burn dots, three normal burn dots (hyper plasma literally refires a 2nd time before enhanced cloak re-engages), an omega HY burn and two normal omega burns (it fires twice before re-cloak).
That's a bit odd. The way I understand it, damage modifiers on High Yield don't boost the bleedthrough modifier - they only modify base damage.
Hence, the change in damage is multiplicative, not subtractive. Your calculations assume that bleedthrough % has increased, not base damage increased. A plain base damage change would result in the following:
Transphasics: 86%*40% = 34.4% of plain, unbuffed base damage per torp
Quantum: 108%*10% = 10.8% of plain, unbuffed base damage per torp
Photon: 111%*10% = 11.1% of plain, unbuffed base damage per torp
Which leaves transphasics still ruling the roost with bleed, at something like triple the rest.
As for the photons/quantums taking out the shield, I feel that it's very difficult to do so unless you have other methods of stripping off shields - in which case you'd probably be working with someone else, and the point is moot - both trans and quants would be even. I mean, total damage to shields of a HY3 Quantum would be 3159*0.10*2.948 = 931.8. Even if you add APA, ambush and 4 consoles, you get 931.8*1.25*2.2*1.6*=4099 damage, which is about two-thirds a single average Covariant shield facing's capacity, without factoring resistances. A crit may make things more viable, but I wouldn't bet on a pure boat being able to bring down a facing without help.
Like I said, I somewhat doubt a pure torp boat is able to overwhelm shields.
Resilients are fairly common in PvP, from what I hear. *shrugs*
Like I said, when plasma is front-loaded like that, HE and debuff clears will deal with the plasma burn in a flash. Also, rep torps are kind of another matter. If so, you'd have to consider the cluster torp as a build option, since when running transphasic consoles, that would have an effect too.
Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that trans torps aren't quite as useless as you may think.
I dusted off my B'rel and took her for her first voyage in a long time, to Ker'rat.
I was just there to test out the quantums. Two years ago, this ship could strip the shields of any ship save the heaviest-shielded science ships using quantums with HY3. Tonight, she could almost but not quite strip the shields on unsuspecting targets. However, targets with active buffs didn't appear to be affected at all, and shield damage was negligible.
That includes the elite crystalline entity stf.
i've so far never been outside the top 3.
10 ships i believe? 10 different builds, yet i beat them all pretty much and im not even trying.
Still thats pve and not pvp ofcourse which is probably a whole other ballgame.
The fact is, this game really doesnt require much to do dps.
all these nice thought out calculations mean exactly.. well nothing.
Anybody older then 12 can figure out or put together almost anything and make it work.
(which to be honest is actually kind of a strength in the game, most mmo's really are not like that when you think about it)
Use photons and you'll increase your DPS three fold in comparison.
the modifier is applied on the damage the torpedo actually delivers. Hence higher base damage means higher damage which means higher bleedthrough equivalent. This is why I say the higher damage modifiers of the quantum and photons applied on top of the already higher base damage of quantums and photons increase their bleedthrough.
My point with the torpedoes and bleedthrough is that the phasic can keep firing as much as it wants and doing minor hull damage every time .... in the same time period the photon and quantum will do almost as much bleed damage and will take down the shields much faster than the phasics ever would..and a single photon or quantum strike to the hull makes all the phasic shield bleedthrough damage seem small in comparison.
PVP is perhaps the only place phasics are nominally useful. PVE they are utterly useless.
I've been saying it and I'll say it again. The only reason for fitting rapid fire transphasics is to proc doff so you can get some kind of sustainable dps. There is no reason for fitting normal transphasics. Transphasics builds are about the clusters. 40% shield penetration for transphasic torps is too low. You need the 80% penetration of mines. All mines from cluster either crit or not crit at the same time, not individually. With Rommy, you can have up to 1/3 chance of crit. It's the only case in sto where critting actually delivers a spike, like in most other mmos, as opposed to evening out and adds a little bit of dps. No player ship can survive one critted cluster even with polarize hull active. Nothing short of polarize hull 3 and brace for impact 3 on at the same time on the largest cruiser with full set of neutroniums will do. That will not happen, as nobody will expend their brace for impact for no reason. You fit 2 clusters, 2 rapids, in t'varo or b'rel, sneak up on someone, drop the cluster at point blank, watch the mines do its work, and brace for the incoming whine in chat.